1st Place Winner of the Poetry Contest: This 3 p.m. - Katie Quarles

​I can’t stop thinking about how some lucky human was the first in history to eat a pineapple

nibbling segments 
​
as I shape my mouth around the dried ring

a pale sun of February with a hole in it where the heat 

should be, the February sun segmented by blind slats 
​
sun-strings flirting with my hair, strand to strand, demi-liveliness to demi-liveliness 

whippy treeheads 

forced to nod to the wind’s arrhythmic huffing

make outside untempting

too, the cat’s light snores, his hidden plummy heartbeat

ticking me toward fatigue

I was late to loving 

pineapple, the first time I ate the fruit fresh was in Hawai’i

the runny sunset seduced me wholly

what wasn’t pink around me was orange, which is basically pink

except the trippy yellow of the pineapple slices

flavor sharp and breezy

a gilded razor blade

a gilded fin slicing waves into wavelets  



"Noctalgia"; "This 3 p.m." Katie Quarles has a B.A. in Literature/Creative Writing from U.C. Santa Cruz. While earning her degree, she won the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize. Her work has appeared most recently in journals including Nebo, Phantom Drift, and Word For/Word. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her spouse and their rambunctious cat Remy.